Senator Rallies With Community Board 7 and Members of the Community to Protest a BSA Application for House of Worship on Small Lot

(Queens, NY) On Saturday, January 30th, State Senator Tony Avella rallied with members of the community to oppose plans submitted to the Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA) for the construction of a Mosque on a insufficiently sized lot. Although Senator Avella, Community Board 7 and civic leaders urged Masjid-E-Noor, the religious organization submitting the proposal, to significantly revise their application and search for alternative locations, the concerns were unfortunately ignored. Masjid-E-Noor continued pursuing the application with BSA

In the application filed to BSA, a projected 420 congregants will be in attendance for services. However, the programmatic needs of the the architect’s figures calculated the occupancy by assessing five square feet of standing roomper person. These measurements failed to take into account the prayer matts and position which would limit the occupancy to roughly 250 people at most. The corner lot’s irregular shape makes the already minimal square footage even less capable of accommodating the intended congregation.

In addition, the submission requests that the parking requirement be eliminated, leaving only the surrounding streets to be used for parking. The lot also juts into a tight corner intersection and the large three story building would dramatically hinder line of sight for drivers due to Masjid-E-Noor’s request to waiver the traditional 15-foot front yard setback to only 7 feet so as to fit the house of worship on the small lot.

“It is simply infeasible to build a mosque of this scale at the proposed sites. If Masjid-E-Noor were to pick a lot capable of accommodating their congregation, I would do everything in my power to expedite their process so they could have a house of worship for their own. Unfortunately, the lot off Parsons is incapable to handle their programmatic needs. I trust that the Board of Standards and Appeals will recognize the logistical nightmare during their review. There is only one solution here and that is for Masjid-E-Noor to give us a location we can work with,” said State Senator Tony Avella.

“This is not the first time that the use of this plan has come into question and it has been previously turned down for a commercial enterprise for the very obvious reasons of safety due to the unusual confluence of the streets. The following question comes to my mind: did the previous owner of the property inform the new owners that any new building put up there would come into question if it did not conform to the location, “ said Beverly McDermott, President of the Kissena Park Civic Association. 

We thoroughly reviewed this application at Community Board 7 and found it to be way beyond the scope of reasonable.  The building is much too big, too high, set out too far on all sides, and provides no parking.  It would be 3 times the size of the single family home next door. But the major problem is that it is too small for the Mosque’s current membership, and provides no room for growth.  We turned the application down for these multiple reasons,” said Tyler Cassell of Community Board 7.

Broadway-Flushing Homeowners’ Association stands with its neighbor the Kissena Park Civic Association in opposition of the very extensive variances at 46-06 Parsons Boulevard that will violate essentially every part of the R2 zoning which currently exists for the proposed house of worship-type of community facility, including yard setbacks, street wall height, sky exposure plane, Floor Area Ratio, maximum lot coverage and the elimination of all required onsite parking. The proposed building is simply far too big for this site. The granting of the variance would not serve the community and instead, completely change the character of the neighborhood,” said Janet McCreeshof Broadway-Flishing Homeowners Association.